Liquid quality sensors are utilized in a number of commercial, agricultural, industrial and consumer applications. The ability to detect the quality and adulteration of a liquid or fluid is important for a number of quality and safety reasons.
Consumers and users come across many types of fluids and liquids in everyday life. For example, fluids, such as milk, edible oil and so forth, are encountered as a matter of daily living. It is expected that such liquids be clean and pure. Due to a lack of awareness or complexity of the any testing of these products, consumers are left with no choice but to accept the material “as is”. What is needed to overcome these problems is a simple and reliable technique and/or device for confirming the quality of the material. Similarly the same technology can also be used for other applications in industry such as the detection of adulterated petrochemicals, oil quality in automobile and so forth.
Qualitative testing helps to determine what is present in a given liquid. Quantitative testing provides information on how much of a constituent is present in a given liquid this technology can be used for both qualitative and quantitative testing.
One liquid sensing method for the detection of the adulteration of fuels, for example, relies on the use of markers. Various chemical/biochemical markers are available. The marker is added in trace level with the fuel and whenever the product is tested, the marked chemical is detected and measured by specific instruments. This methodology is limited in practicality and efficiency and is also quite expense to implement. It is also difficult to maintain a constant dosage at low concentrations. Additionally, many of these markers interact with materials and fuel impurities adding to errors in detection quality.
Based on the foregoing, it is believed that an improved liquid sensor apparatus and methodology is required, which can be readily and efficiently implemented. Such an apparatus and methodology is disclosed herein.